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137333-ingame-costs-are-ridiculous
Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- You can view dyes in your dye channels for free before actually dying your pieces, so don't let prices stop you from experimenting with different dyes, just find the combos you like the best then only purchase what you like the best. Edited October 5, 2015 by Nazryn | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- exactly. the average player wont be able to afford things now and will probably dip into the cash shop to supplement their play. Its only the terminally unemployed 8h a day players that will be able to afford Everything. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Dailys at 50 make money pretty easy to come by. I wouldn't stress that too much just yet. Idk is that really true? Or is that just leet-guild preference. I'd imagine a good player with decent gear that wasn't perfectly rune optimized would still do just fine in raids / vet content. I of course could be mistaken... Edited October 5, 2015 by Nazryn | |} ---- Yes, but prior you could also live with a few bad slots. They changed the system so you pretty much *must* have the right colors. I'd rather have the one re-roll system where most slots are useful than the 40G a pop re-roll system where you have to keep pulling the slot machine level until you get the right color. | |} ---- The costs of maintaining iLvel 96+ gear is much greater than the ability that gear gives to farm. Already I can detect people's irritability at being awarded gear because they know what's about to come. Since most of our raid is fully GA gear now, we had a few players get multiple pieces from GA last night. One of the players, who got two token pieces, said she only had a few gold and had no way to rune this stuff. When getting gear feels like a burden/punishment, the costs are too high. | |} ---- This is a population and supply issue. By more players at level 50 playing more runes will come and prices will drop. The problem with reducing costs now or increasing drop rates means in the long run gold inflation will be a bigger problem, which is why these kneejerk fixes aren't generally good long term. | |} ---- Yep, it's really true. It takes a lot of re-rolling just to get "workable", not optimized. And the difference is HUGE. Optimized >>> workable >>>>>> throw something in there >>>>>>>> no runes at all. My guild is not a "leet-guild". We're generally pretty lax about stuff. But it became pretty clear very quickly this week that everyone was going to have to re-roll slots for us to be where we were before regarding power. Oh, and don't make a mistake. Because at 50G a pop to destroy a poorly slotted rune (or one you put in for temporary purposes in order to upgrade later) it's VERY expensive to change. | |} ---- The cost of re-rolling slots is fixed. There is no supply/demand to drop the prices of that, nor of removing runes. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Ok, so you were thinking no runes versus optimal runes. Yea that makes sense. TBH it's much easier to get set bonuses now even with out optimal runes, but I definitely get the necessity of being runed vs un-runed. | |} ---- While that is true, i personally could farm gold rather rapidly, perhaps harder nowadays however we have to acknowledge this is an anomaly. This takes place due to the gear and rune changes, normally this scenario would rarely take place. Which is why i'm not a big fan of a kneejerk fix that will have long term impact based on a temporary situation. Also I cleared GA when gear was craptacular, 1 to 2 rune slots on purples (not even orange back then). I'm even sure that now just with the base gear and without a single rune you have more damage and healing. The mitigation is less but that is due to changes in the passive mitigation values which were too high according to them. So i'm with Nazryn on this i don't believe you need full runed gear to clear GA. | |} ---- Runes are a bigger source of power than they were before. They make a huge difference. Here is our tuesday parse, when the only DPS in the raid with runes (as far as I know) were Crisseyda (who was fully runed, but not optimally runed) and myself. http://www.wildstarlogs.com/reports/NXYF4kaLMR36tH2K#type=damage-done Ok, so I understand there's a difference between "no runes" and "optimally runed". But if you do not re-roll colors, you will be hard pressed to get set bonuses and you'll end up taking a lot of runes that give no dps increase (like increased health). Even on my alt where I have not been able to rune with fully exceptional runes, I still spent a ton of plat just making sure the colors were something that I could make "workable". | |} ---- No- I was showing how powerful runes with the link. But read the second half of my post. It's very hard to get set bonuses without re-rolling slots. Also, notice the difference between Crisseyda and myself. Now, granted, I know she flubbed up her execution a bit because of lag/new addons etc., but even if you just looks at our Quick Draw damage you'll see I'm doing 10% more damage. That is with us both being at a very similar gear level (both have almost full 100 level items + DS pistols and chest). She had about 2/3 of her runes filled with exceptional runes with me having exceptionals in every slot. That is- she paid the plat to get optimal colors and still ended up behind me 10% because of lack of exceptional runes. Now imagine if she didn't re-roll slots or put any exceptionals in. She'd be much farther back than 10% | |} ---- We went into GA on Tuesday with no one having runes. We didn't get very far (lot's of lag, very frustrating experience), but with most players being fully GA geared, our TTKs were about what they were when we were 2/6. In fact, our X-89 kill was 7 minutes, which was about what I think our first progression kill was. Last night we went back in with everyone being runed and we just melted the place. Our DPS definitely feels higher than it was pre-F2P. So while I can agree that "optimal" is not "required", having runes is going to be important, and a lot of re-rolling is required just to make a set "workable". And besides THAT, you are punished severely for putting in non-optimal runes because it costs a lot of plat to destroy them later if you want to upgrade. | |} ---- ---- ---- But now we are entering a discussion of if runes make it easier and no longer a discussion of making it required. I am aware that rune bonuses are strong now, but that's what people asked for to get better runes, prune the crappy ones and so on. Perhaps another currency instead of a gold one would have been better but those are systems we also had before which people didn't really like. You said yourself you aren't an elite guild, give your members time to farm gold and get everything geared seems to me there's more peer pressure going on that pushes casual players to quickly get everything in order while everything is in state of flux or at least that's the impression i'm getting. Again this is a one time event, nowhere in the future unless another major overhaul is planned what i doubt they will do any time soon will you be forced to reroll multiple pieces to a full set in one go. If some time from now passes and people still find that the gold sink outweighs the gold earned they should take a look at it. | |} ---- It takes getting the right colored slots to get our performance back to where it was pre-F2P. This is more than just a one-time event. Gearing up is going to be murder for new players, and those trying to raid with alts? It's going to be rough. | |} ---- Yup that's another sort of odd mindset players go into. Going for optimal when it isn't needed i personally wouldn't recommend this on a guild level until i hit DS and noticed issues there, doing that on every step of the way does seem like overkill and that's something the person even admits to it being with saying they 'melted the place'. I wouldn't be surprised that the gold price was kept that way to act as a barrier to allow rune sets to be powerful, we can argue however if gold is the right currency for that and if it shouldn't be glory. A la WoW gear upgrades. Not a big fan of making all upgrade mechanics around a single universal currency. Edited October 5, 2015 by TehAcidBaron | |} ---- ---- Honestly, in fully GA gear with optimized runes, we should be "melting the place", because we aren't runing for GA, we're runing for System Daemons. But are you really going to want to try progressoing on System Daemons without people bringing the best possible runes they can? | |} ---- When you get to System Daemons and give that a whirl, you can revisit the statement and tell me if you still think we are "obsessing" by making sure we have the right slots in our gear. | |} ---- ---- It's not so much bad as just typical Endgame optimization pains I'd say. | |} ---- ---- It's the same no matter whether your are a free player or sig status, though with sig status you can grind plat faster. The costs associated with runing are: The materials: these will (hopefully) drop as supply goes up and demands goes down. They are VERY expensive right now, but hopefully will be less so in the future Add slot: except for token gear, you have to add a slot to your gear (if you want all the slots available). This costs plat. Re-Roll Colors: If you want to make sets, you have to get the right combination of runes in your gear. If you are not worried about sets, you'll still have to re-roll some slots, but not as much. Each time you roll it costs a lot of gold, and it will pick another color at random. Service tokens will allow you to pick the color you want. So you can avoid this cost by grinding omnibits/buying NCoins Destroy Runes: If you want to replace a rune, you either have to destroy the existing rune (very expensive) or extract it using service tokens. If you extract it, it is not bound to you and is still tradable. So, with service tokens, all of this becomes much more managable. That means either paying money (above signature sub price), or grinding a lot of omnibits. Signature service does not grand a stipend of service tokens or omnibits. | |} ---- I don't agree that it is "typical". And I can say this- punching the random color re-roll and watching my plat go down 40G a "pull" is one of the worst feeling experiences I've ever had in a video game. Regardless of how expensive it is, an RNG slot-machine is just a really rotten mechanic. It'd rather just pay two plat and be done with it. | |} ---- Although all this sounds kinda terrible to me, it's something I was "kinda" expecting. With F2P there are always some sort of monetization exploitation of the systems in place. For a former sub since head-start, it's painful to see how the incentive to use extra RL cash (beside the already signature one) is being pushed into the game. Basically, the game became a bit more expensive if one wants to keep the QoL we had before f2p. | |} ---- just a side note, FFXIV kind of also feels like that if you're into end game crafting, or trying to save up for a house. Income is a lot slower in FFXIV by normal means, but you also spend less. However if you're, let's say, going for a fully melded level 60 crafters gear for all your crafters you will be spending around 200 million gil. And good luck making that. So while it's far less restrictive if you're just into battleclasses, it turns into hell if you're actually going for hardcore crafting. | |} ---- The main issue for me is, I'm worried that people are going to be reluctant to take new drops, or dismayed when new drops happen, because of the costs involved in getting those drops up to par. It's going to make minor upgrades very painful. The last thing this game needs is spraying people in the face with pepper spray whenever they get the carrot on the stick. But it may be better once people have had a chance to farm service tokens and the prices of mats on the AH come down. it admittedly feels pretty bad right now because people have spent gobs of plat just to get their gear back to where it was pre-f2p. It will be interesting to see how the system feels to first time players gearing up. | |} ---- You're right Jeff, it's incredibly simple and easymode for face rollers. in FFXI you couldn't dream of Endgame optimization unless you were literally one of a hand full of players in the most elite guilds. The vast majority of the player base could never hope to optimise their characters because of the sheer resources you needed from Dynamis to craft your relic weapons and armour. The same can be said about many more MMO's then not. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned, but rerolling a few runes and spending a few plat to optimise gear is nothing compared to collecting 30,000 rare raid drops just to start stage one of 5 on a single relic piece. I'm atrocious at making money in games, yet even an incompetent farmer like me could make 50p in a few days off dailies, shiphands and contracts alone. If I could do it, i'm pretty sure any moderately active casual player could. Sure the economy will be a toss up for a bit, but it will settle out eventually... plus an unstable economy gives clever folks a massive money making edge when playing the market. I can understand some people frustration, to a point. But has patience and extended gameplay really fallen so far out of the genre that a couple days or even a week or two of dailies / farming is obscene to optimize BiC end game gear? I guess I'll go stand in the old fogies corner.... | |} ---- ---- Hmmm this doesnt sound very good. Edited October 5, 2015 by Xorian | |} ---- ---- Teach me Senpai. I don't see how you're making 50 plat "in a few days" on just those activities unless you're constantly doing them on an army of alts or are getting lucky drops. FWIW it seems like they've upped the drop rate of certain stupidly rare items (a good thing). If that's how you're bankrolling yourself it won't last. The people in my raid team would love the option to gradually upgrade their gear. This topic exists precisely because doing that is so stupidly punishing. The other problem is that the drop rate on materials is ridiculously low. There isn't any choice but to optimize up front with the best runes or get reamed when you've finally scraped up enough mats to make them. The capability gap between optimal and yay-I've-got-runes! is astronomical. I feel really sorry for any fresh teams attempting GA in Dungeon/WB gear. EQ gave way to WoW because Western audiences resoundingly rejected grindcore. | |} ---- I'm going to call you out on this. How are you making 50p in a "few days" from these activities? How many hours over "a few days"? What exactly makes the money? Drops? Gold rewards once you've capped Elder Gems? I'm a "moderately active casual player" and most of my game time is spent doing precisely what you describe - dailies, veteran shiphands and lots of contracts. I also play the AH a bit, moderately. I make reasonable plats, enough to buy a CREDD per month to fund my sub and enough on top to pay for most of what I need (I don't raid). But nowhere near the amounts you describe. Would love to know where I'm going wrong. Or is this 50p figure just something you plucked out the air to back up your argument? | |} ---- ---- yeah I want to dye my gear now. I can do it right now in any other MMO, without spending a day or two grinding money for it first T_T | |} ---- ---- Folks HAVE been playing this game for over a year. We had our gear tweaked the way we desired and we were progressing in our content at the pace we desired. Then it was removed, and we are forced to shoulder the burden of re-tweaking, even with token compensation for the prior runes, it is still extremely expensive due to the new system and we'd like to get BACK to progressing in our content at the pace we desired. So while what you say is accurate, everything is obtainable in time, it completely overlooks the aspect of their gamer base who has been supporting the game for quite a long time. It also overlooks the aspect of the gamer who was managing to make do with minimal resources and still pursue content, and now have that minimal resource tapped HARD in order to keep performing at the level they were accustomed to. Not everyone had the time or resources to farm more than the CREDD price and whatever was needed for consumables for raiding. Now those folks are really scraping under a punitively expensive system. Yes in the long run maybe it'll balance out. In the short run it is indeed very expensive. | |} ---- I'm disappointed. You forgot to use the word "entitlement". Such a missed opportunity. You do realise that a lot of players were already optimised for endgame. They didn't get optimised overnight. They worked long and hard at it. Then the game went F2P, some core mechanics concerning gear and runes were changed and players have been asked to do it all again because the compensation measures provided (rune tokens etc) are inadequate to get players back to where they were before. And at the same time, in-game costs have been pushed up across the board. Things such as re-rolling rune slots, dyeing gear, repairs, crafting etc are all vastly more expensive than they were before F2P. But gold is not any easier to earn than before so everything is now designed to exhaust players gold reserves, suck as much gold out of the economy as possible and funnel players to the cash shop. This includes Signature players who are already paying and are now being asked to pay more if they don't wish to get their noses firmly stuck to the increased grind. It's got precious little to do with designing a good balanced, fun MMO that can make a decent proft and everything to do with manipulating people into parting with their cash regardless of the consequences for the long term playability / viability of the game. Anyway, defend it all you will - time will tell if the majority of players are willing to accept this or see through the cash grab. | |} ---- ---- ---- Little blue circle with a checkmark or something to that nature. But yeh. +1 to the OP. It doesn't feel that great being fully runed and raid ready, to barely being able to afford to do vet dungeons. :T | |} ---- But at the end of the day, you're just comparing ATROCIOUSLY BAD game design to BAD game design. Neither is actually a good or enjoyable player experience. | |} ---- the costs of dyeing your gear has nothing to do with cosmetics, but just with a gold sink. Meaning that perhaps a better gold sink would be to drop the price of dyeing gear lower and up the price of dyes themselves. | |} ---- ---- Yea, kind of hard to use FFXI as a bench when it's been cited as one of the worst MMOs ever developed that it's only success point was being driven by the FF IP. Good game design includes that sweet spot of feeling like you're working towards something and being rewarded rather than punished for every little thing you want to do. Right now the dye costs are kind of, well, bad. The rune thing is just flat out unacceptable. I heard a lot of guildies burn though tons of plat or blow the 20 bucks for the service tolkens, both something that players who have been at end game for more than a month shouldn't have had to do. And the repair costs are pushing people out of the random queues rather than encouraging them into them. | |} ---- ---- No, actually... I think they did it to deliberately try and get people to purchase Service Tokens and thought very little on its merits as a gold sink. Granted, Carbine has shown in the past with dye prices that they don't necessarily understand how gold sinks work best, but... yeah. I'm pretty sure the absurd prices on dyes and runing are expressly to drive people toward the cash shop to get around them. | |} ---- That's the thing, Even if it isn't as malicious as it looks, it REALLY LOOKS THAT WAY. Bad business model. Sure, offer the tokens as a shortcut, but these prices in-game need to come down in some serious way. It's crippling. | |} ---- This is exactly how I feel, your suppose to get starter gear for early raids and better for later raids thats how mmorpgs can last you, not cripple you to a point where you cannot perform very well in raids in general. Even in the original eq I could raid before I had amazing gear. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- This is especially true when you consider that we've basically had this conversation before. Early on, dyeing was ridiculously expensive and they adjusted costs accordingly. Now, they boosted them back up, albeit not as high - but, hey, now you can spend real money to get around those costs! Sort of feels like how a store will jack up their prices right before offering a sale. Runing, I can understand being expensive, it wasn't exactly cheap before and was more limited as well. And honestly, I think things will even out in the long-run once the economy gets going more, but raising the prices on dyeing does irk me a little. Edited October 6, 2015 by Cantatus | |} ---- ---- ---- These are reasonable complaints though, and they can be used to better let the devs fix the issue. And not all of us are new. I've played it off and on since Beta. Good job trying to make our opinions look meaningless, though and I appreciate your input. You are correct in some of what you said, but the changes they have made so far in some aspects have been a much stronger push than I'm sure they realistically intended. | |} ---- ---- You are right. Omnibits are there for us to use and they are definitely an overlooked currency right now but using omnibits to take care of something that is kind of necessary for raiding. That lends to a "pay to win" chant from some folks and I'd love to not hear any of that lol | |} ---- ---- I agree, but I recall playing RIFT and having to defend it's f2p model just because they decided to add a few pieces of gear to the store that had stats. But similarly, if you need to reroll your runes but cant because the cost has inflated and the only thing you can spend are your omnibits you were saving for a cosmetic piece, this leaves a bad taste in many people's mouth. This also lends to the potential of being required to spend money to get raid ready because guilds want their folks in the best shape they can be for raid. | |} ---- But, "pay to make sure you can upkeep on your gear necessary for raiding" is getting close. I know it isn't pay to win, and I'm determined to not spend a (real) dime on runes, but it's pretty painful. Those who spent real money on service tokens have definitely had an advantage. | |} ---- The cap is 120 ominbits, so you can re-roll 4 slots for "free" per week. Not really enough when I had to rune an entire set of gear. Actually, four sets of gear across two characters. | |} ---- Actually pay to win can also mean paying to have an advantage over other players, if paying players could use gear that outperforms free players in raiding, that is an advantage same goes for pvp, technically that is still pay to win. But this sounds like an issue for free and paying players. Now I do not know this game well enough so far so I am not saying it is pay to win, just explaining that an advantage is pay to win. Edited October 6, 2015 by Xorian | |} ---- ---- Play the long game. You play MMOs for years, potentially. Play for the community and the fun, try new things and come back to that stuff with the gold you've earned. Edited October 6, 2015 by Ratstomper | |} ---- Dyeing a costume really shouldn't be "the long game". | |} ---- I agree while it should take some time, but it should never feel as hard as getting actual gear. Cosmetics should come second in a more challenging mmorpg. | |} ---- ---- The whole "play the long game" thing only works when the developers play the long game too and treat the time players have invested in their characters with respect. Otherwise, it's very easy to find all your hard work and effort have been eroded overnight after a patch, your past efforts now count for very little and you're being asked to do it all again. It's also very easy to find that what you thought was a healthy amount of savings of in-game currency is now worth much much less because overnight, thanks to a patch, the whole economy has been manipulated. MMO developers no longer play the long game. The F2P model almost guarantees that the short game is everything. | |} ---- Yes. | |} ---- This. We are not talking about just changing appearance of a set of gear. I am not arguing that outfitting your endgame equipment with super-powered runes should be free or anything like that. But does dying an outfit really need to cost 1p+? That really seems a tad bit excessive. | |} ---- ---- ---- They normalized the prices to your level. The orange dyes got slightly cheaper to use, the cheap ones got astronomically more expensive. Platinum Grey, the white dye you get from the Dye intro mission now costs more to use at 50 than Supernova and Blackhole. | |} ---- Yes, massively so for many dyes. If you're only checking a rare dye like Supernova White then you won't see much difference (or perhaps its actually cheaper). If you're checking a common dye you'll see a HUGE difference. For example Zephyrite, a very common green dye. Before F2P this cost a few silver to apply to all costume channels (around 30s if I remember correctly). It now costs 1p 70g to apply to all channels at level 50. This isn't some lone anomaly, this massive price hike is repeated across the whole range of common and uncommon dyes. | |} ---- Precisely this. It is ingame-currency /crippling/ to actually dye a full costume right now. If you actually have PVE concerns, like runing? You simply won't waste time with costumes. I.e. you'll skip the fun so you can do the 'work' part, because that's 'more important'. It's ALL supposed to be fun. No one is saying 'make it free'. It's logical there should be some ingame cost to do these things. But this astronomical price-spike that happend on things that /specifically/ get bypassed by real money currency is VERY blatant, and very painful. | |} ---- ---- ---- If this were a new company that may be true. But NCSoft are grizzled F2P veterans, both here and in their home country of Korea. They know exactly what they are doing. Edited October 6, 2015 by Leiloni | |} ---- Bad idea, repairing has to have a cost to it as part of the motivation to get better at the game and not need to repair as often. Just not a punishment for failure. Needs to be motivational, not punishing. | |} ---- ---- ---- The thing I have never understood is if I already own the shirt, and I already own the dye why should it cost me anything at all to use that dye on that shirt? So it seems even stranger to increase those costs, that logically should exist in the first place. It makes no sense, unless of course you want to try an force people to buy some kind of "service token". All The Best | |} ---- ---- That's nice. My problem with this and your approach to "see how it shakes out post f2p" for runes and classes is that it screws over anyone who does anything between relaunch and whenever you guys come to your senses and find the proper balance. It goes back to the feeling far too many had at the initial release that we are basically beta testing on live. Not cool. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- I like that idea, well officially speaking that is, I will also be taking the “wait and see” approach. I was before too, just not officially speaking :P I was fairly stoked to get to play “Dye and Match” with my LIVE holodrobe, but after logging in with one of my poorer Alts, the cost was an instance NO here. You just put a rock and a hard place in between the choices of what spend my plat on. That Northern Lights dye was sweet to play with on PTR…….. oh well I guess my current costume setup will be staying a tad longer. | |} ---- Not to beat a dying horse or anything but usually when you guys say you are going to tweak shit based off of metrics we don't see a change till months later. The problem you face here is two different economies. On one hand you need gold sinks to get money out of the economy. So you taxed runes. Runes due to their... well utility have always been expensive, but this is a player to player cost so the money remains "In" the economy. So now players are seeing themselves hit twice, first from other players selling bits and bobs for crafting runes, second by you for rolling slots. Once again you guys being horrible at itemizing things has come to bite the players in the ass. You could cut the reroll costs by a quarter and it would still be awful for a new level 50 trying to get into dungeons. As much as me comparing this to WoW is going to start a bunch of poo flinging chimpanzees losing their minds despite the fact that this game damn near crashed into the ground: Looking at what WoW has done with gemming and statting recently is probably the way to go. During the MOP expansion it was required to jump through about five different hoops just to get a piece of gear up to the point where it was actually a "Replacement" for the gear you are currently wearing. This is obnoxious, expensive and unfun for the player. So some wise sage said "Lets just do away with that shit." and ya know? They were right. On the other hand you have a problem where your (Carbines) itemization system is literally worse than anything that has ever come before in that it throws a particularly odious RNG aspect into the fray. Here let me fix it for you: Change itemization back to where the primary needed stats are on the object itself. Simplify the stats set: Primaries: AP Support Common Pool: Crit Multistrike Switch Healer Focuspool Focusregen Switch Tank: HP Resists Make the gear sets on supports swap between the important stats in the switch column. And just throw away the "Glance"/"To hit" garbage because it's stupid as hell. The bosses are giants. Now strip out all but one rune on each piece of gear so runererolls to get a set bonus are still a thing "Top Tier Raiders" would do. Tada your itemization no longer punishes players, as a general rule ilvl would dictate what's an upgrade, and no one needs to consult a spreadsheet to see if they should hit the "Need" button. It also ensures that when a piece of "Support" gear drops, someone absolutely needs that. There's no wasted "Sharded" crap. Also make runes cheaper to make, there's nothing fun about running instances just to tear apart crap just so you can rune up for the instance you are actually running because it's circular as hell and it sucks. Now to make up for all the money you were attempting to gouge out of players (By the way: This kind of idiot brick wall is WHY you are currently free to play instead of enjoying a healthy sub base) make cute goofy outfits/housing plugs/bonus xp doodads and sell them to people. They will buy them if the costs are right. GW2 exists primarily due to it's gem store. Take the lesson there and run with it. EDIT Again: I mean honestly the fact that you don't have a half dozen "Pay" only houses that players can buy, and are selling packs of furniture that can already be gotten in game shows how far the ball has really been dropped on the cash shop. People would absolutely drop madbux on a neat house that couldn't be gotten via normal game methods. Ditto for furniture packs. Whoever is doing the costumes is on the ball though. Give that dude a cookie. Edited October 7, 2015 by Rhymenoserous | |} ---- ---- Yep, even architect has one of these. The Grimvault architect daily includes making three Freebot Surge Protectors. Each one of which uses a Starshard, which is very rare and (unsurprisingly therefore) very expensive. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- This post says exactly what needs to be said. I'll only add how blatantly transparent attempts at hidden costs and price gouging are. Its the "problem-reaction-solution" model so prevelant in the eastern market. It is viewed as highly disingenious here in the west, and there is probably no quicker way to lower brand reputation than with tactics like that. Rhym's assesment as to what should be in a cash shop are spot on. I know it's launch, but Wildstar's cash shop is completely underwheleming, not to mention the fact that the subscription model feels inadequate compared to the sub model in other titles. If you try and build in hidden costs, you will be absolutely despised. You need to know that, and you need to know that right now, you need to be absolutely adding extra value into every single thing you put into the players hand be it in-game or in the cash shop. You desperately need to gain and maintain the trust and confidence of the player base right now. You've managed to right a sinking ship, and you have a second chance. This game has tremndous potential. For the sake of what a fun and refreshing IP Wildstar is, please don't blow it with a sleezo bussiness model. A cash shop that is primarily fluff actually does well. Really well, in fact. I don't want to advertize the competition here, but there are successful games in the west right now that sell predominately fluff in their cash shops... Not currencies that serve as additonal solutions to contrived deficits added by the developers... Do you guys really think that the population is going to think thats ok, and that its not painfully obvious? That pretty much is what is meant when people use terms like 'cash grab' in reference to video games. On the same token, gold sinks have to make sense and can't be so blattantly contrived, or so cost prohibitive that the feature or service in question is simply avoided. Thats where you're at right now with the costs of cosmetic changes (especially at higher levels), and that's on top of the fact that you've lowered in-game revenue sources. Whether intended or not, it certainly appears to be an attempt to manipulate the consumer into spending real money, through contrived scarcity. Self defeating. And by the way, economics are not simply a mater of metrics. That has been the chief analytical failing of the discipline through the 80s until trend setters in the 90s realized that you needed to incorporate human behavior and psychology into working models. So you can't just say "We'll watch whats trending". Of course, you have to watch numbers, but numbers themselves are not enough Edited October 7, 2015 by j3crow | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ----